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The Organization: Hacienda HealthCare
Hacienda HealthCare is a leading healthcare organization located in Arizona. It basically offers specialized healthcare services focusing on the medically fragile infants including chronic young adults and children (Hacienda HealthCare, 2010). The healthcare organization has essentially specialised in offering a wide range of services to its esteemed clientele. Among the range of services offered include occupational therapy, speech therapy programs, 24 hour nursing care program, 24 hour respiratory care program, and other critical services (Hacienda HealthCare, 2010). In order to support these critical service components, Hacienda healthcare relies upon the provision of up-to-date technology support systems focusing on hardware and software components. Furthermore it relies upon the provision of technical competencies, which are essentially provided by the existing workforce in terms of specialty and qualification criterion. In a previous case study carried out to establish the external force fundamentals affecting Hacienda healthcare. These were elementally focussing upon technological issues, community service essentials, and workforce fundamentals affecting the provision of services in similar healthcare settings (Hendricks & Timothy, 2009).
External Force A: Technology
The Effect
By virtue of the fact that Hacienda healthcare fundamentally focuses upon the provision of specialised healthcare infant and young children, this implies it relies upon technologically enhanced services.
These include medical support equipment that are essentially used in the provision of acute and sub-acute care hospital services intended for paediatric service essentials. For instance, a particular branch of the hospital, in this case the Los Niños Hospital recently had a shortage of technological equipment to support the number of children it was handling at a point in time (Hendricks & Timothy, 2009). The case in this particular branch is especially with regard to hardware technological requirements. This has consequently led to the occurrence of large number of referrals to other tertiary healthcare providers surrounding them, and specifically those one hosting specialised healthcare units for paediatrics specialisation in less intensive settings. This implies that as a healthcare provider, the Hacienda healthcare has lost a good number of patients to these settings since once referrals are made these patients tend to continue those tertiary settings for their healthcare services. Moreover, Hacienda healthcare needed to upgrade their software support systems, which is essentially used to support the linking of information services from its branches to a central point for easy management similar to other healthcare providers who have installed similar systems (Hendricks & Timothy, 2009).
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The Adapted Change
In a bid to settle some of the emerging technological barriers towards the enhancement of their healthcare services in all its branches, the management set out to incorporate critical changes in its operational framework. The management introduced a centralized software system that would essentially manage its critical service provisions in the different settings in which it initially operated on individual units in the critical settings. Furthermore, the management decided to source for special technological equipment that could effectively be used in the provision of the mush needed extra services especially in due consideration of the increasing number of children it some of its facilities. These hardware technological requirements will essentially be offered through a progressive mechanism that will enable Hacienda healthcare to manage the resulting logistics (Hendricks & Timothy, 2009). Moreover, solving the technological problems would enable them to reclaim its patients by removing the increasing number of referrals to the tertiary settings.
External Force B: Workforce
The Effect
In the recent past the healthcare service sector has undergone significant changes in terms of workforce fundamentals. There has been significant improvement in the healthcare environment especially with regard to the development of training solution to cater for the changing health care context with regard to the creation of specialised units. The fact that Hacienda is a specialised healthcare institution, majority of its staff are essentially general healthcare providers leading to a potential lack of personnel some of its specialised healthcare departments (Hendricks & Timothy, 2009). In addition, the current practice demands the specialization of particular units of services with an aim of minimising the range of workforce requirements needed in some of the critical settings. Consequently, Hacienda experiences significant difficulty especially when it comes to handling paediatric respiratory conditions in which the services demand an element of specialisation as whole unit as opposed to the provision of a departmental unit within a single large branch (Hendricks & Timothy, 2009). This has led to the need for expansion of their branches in order to accommodate the increasing patient numbers. The more serious effect has resulted from the need to employ more staff members in order to support some of these specialised services.
The Adapted Change
In a bid to offer a lasting solution to their fundamental problems, Hacienda healthcare has consequently initiated plans aimed at creating specialized units where only specialized healthcare services are offered (Hendricks & Timothy, 2009). This especially entails the creation of specific branches by eliminating the issue of handling a wide range of services offered in a single branch. The essence of doing this has especially been with regard to reducing the aspect of generalisation in its branches in order to significantly reduce the number of personnel needed to handle the specialised services. For instance, in one of its branches in phoenix, the hospital had plans to terminate some services in order to reduce the number of staff required for offering ambulatory clinic services targeting young children in the age of 5 to 12 years (Hendricks & Timothy, 2009).